In case anyone is interested. My experiments with issue have concluded:

This is an Ableton - VEPro issue.

Logic is behaving fine.

It only happens when I open an empty Live arrangement. Opening tracks in progress and adding VEpro tracks does not cause a problem.

Disconnecting Ableton Push 2 and reconnecting it clears the problem.

 

 

BTW, This is my first day having upgraded to VEPro 6 from VEpro 5.

Hi. Using Yosemite on MacPro + 2 Mac Mini Slaves.

Monitoring in Activity Monitor - 1 empty instance of VEpro 6 in an empty Ableton arrangement. uses 40% of my quad core processing power in the MacBook Pro. 

Any ideas? 

Hi there. I have 2 Mac Mini slaves connected to Macbook Pro. The MBP has a Caldigit thunderbolt 2 docking station attached; One Mac Mini is directly attached to the Cladigit's ethernet port, the other is attached to the MBP via an ethernet to USB 3.0 adapter.

Is there any advantage of buying a gigabit switch? My way of looking at it so far has been that I would get more bandwidth with the second mini going into a separate port rather than bottle-necking multiple slaves into a 1 gigabit ethernet port. But I am pretty cluless in this department.

I am however encountering problems with Screen Sharing. 9 times out of 10 I am able to monitor one of the Mac Minis but not both and I get an error message saying 'Please make sure Screen Sharing is enabled in the Mac with which you are attempting to connect.'. Which it is.

How are others monitoring multiple slaves? I really don't want lots of moniors as I already have a large 30" Dell.

Thanks for any advice.

 

**EDIT - This problem may have been caused by a faulty USB hub connection that was forcing my hard drives to run at 2.0 speeds. I am currently transfering all my libraries over to a slave mac mini to test everything properly. **

Hi. I just recently started to give VE Pro another shot after giving up on it a while back. Here's what I'm finding at the moment.

I have Ableton Live running as my master DAW and VE Pro hosting some Kontakt libraries. The software is connected locally (on the same computer) at the moment although I do have other computers that I was hoping to use together over ethernet. Buffer in Live is 128; VE Pro server is running at 2 x buffer. Live is using 4% of my Macbook Pro CPU; VE Pro is using about 12%; there is 80% idle and less than 1 GB in use of the 16GB available. Sample libraries are accessed from external USB 3.0 SSDs.

Once loaded I can play the libraries from Live for about one minute then all of a sudden I get crackling and glitching to the extent that it sounds as if my speakers are being ripped apart. Not just the ocassional pop and crackle; total hard drive failure noise. But if I click on the VE Pro server in the dock, which subsequently brings the VE Pro window back to the front the audio stream immediately works properly again. Until I go back to Live and after another minute the same thing happens again.

I remember the same thing happening with Logic + VE Pro many months ago when I was using my old Mac Pro and I eventually gave up because it was totally unusable. I sold the Mac Pro thinking it was probably not up to the task, but it seems VE Pro is the problem.

I should also point out that the main usage I have for VE Pro is for live performances not the playback of large ensembles. I'm basically trying to enable 4 or more musicians to perform simultaneously using virtual instruments and plugin FX via MIDI controllers with VE Pro distributing the CPU load. I've tried many times over the years to get VE Pro to do this with no success. Working at 256 buffer (44.1khz) with 2 x buffer will result in 17ms latency using my MOTU 1248 thunderbolt interface (one the fastest available) and this is not usable in a live scenario. 8ms is the most I can work with and even that is too much for vocals without causing the phasing of in ear monitoring.

Thanks

Hi. I just bought a 2.3ghz i7 with 16gb to use as a slave and am about to upgrade the hard to a Samsung 840 Evo 1tb. While I'm at it I am considering adding a second drive (all Minis are compabale of this). Does anyone know if there will be any / much performance improvement having dual SSDs as opposed to one, or will it just give me more disk space? Has anyone else gone down this route and if so, should I go for a RAID 0 configuration or JBOD? Thanks

OK, so the patches load fine in Logic 8, and VSL support say they load in Logic X, which pretty much prooves this is a Logic 9 issue. So if you're having this nightmare that I'm having and your clients are saying where the f@>? is my music and you've got Logic 8 here is a 'solution' to get your EXS24 patches to load samples in Logic 9 and it ain't pretty or quick.

1. Go to your Library/application support/Logic folder. Ctrl click on sampler instruments. Change privilege to Read & Write. Click the padlock button, enter password, click the settings button in the bottom left corner, select apply to enclosed items, click ok, close padlock.
2. Open Logic 8 and an EXS24 plugin. Load your VSL patch. Click edit, save as, find the original patch file & select, save, replace.
3. Your new patch with it's new creation date, but with the same name and same settings will now open in Logic 9.

1. Anyone wishing to continue to use Logic 9.1.8 and EXS24 samples should not upgrade to Yosemite.
2. I've spent the best part of 2 days trying to get Logic to load my samples with no success.
3. This is not caused by VSL in any way, but for some reason it affects ALL of my VSL patches and some of my other patches.

Firstly, I've realised I was logged in under my wife's login when starting this thread. Sorry about that.

Yes. I've replied to your email. 

These crashes are only caused by VSL EXS24 patches. I can open all my other EXS patches, but I can not open an Orchestral Cube patch without crashing Logic.

Thanks

There's no ooohs in the standard library???? Thats like bringing out a string library and having no violins. 99% of the time people will just want ooohs and aaahs. I probably would have bought the standard library if it had the most commonly used articulations, but I'm definitely not paying £750 just to get some ooohs and aaahs.

  

Hi. After I click the save button in a VI window the Matrix that I have saved is not showing up in my list of Matrices, even though I can see it in my finder window. Is there a particular folder that I need to save them to in order that they can be found by VI? Thanks.

Well, if anyone out there in Vienna-land actually cares, I eventually found a fix for this by myself, as no one from VSL found the time to reply to my emails. Inside the Imperial Piano installation zip folder that is on the CD, there is a Vienna Instruments installation option, which I must somehow have installed along with Imperial Piano. On closer inspection, I noticed that this VI software is for Intel Macs, not Universal Binaries Macs. So if you are using a UB Mac, like me and accidently install the Intel version of VI, like I did, then download the latest UB version of the VI software from the website, re-install it and this fixes the problem. I would like to ask VSL why they have decided to put this old Intel version of VI software on a brand new product and not the latest UB version, which would have been a lot more useful, wouldn't you think?

Hi. I hope someone can help because I have angry clients waiting to finish a job. I just installed Imperial Piano and at first my dongle listed it as 'unknown instrument.' So I updated the LCC software and it now lists it correctly and the Piano appears to be working (first impression - VERY glitchy CPU spikes at 128 buffer on my 8x2.8ghz/10gb/4x500gb MacPro). Anyway, the main problem is that all my other Vienna Instruments libraries are now unavailable and when I open the AU manager and try to validate them they fail, even though the licenses are clearly there on the dongle. Anyone know why? Please. Thank you.

This is not my experience with VI in Logic 8 / MacPro 8x2.8ghz. If I am ONLY playing back already pre-recorded MIDI the Mac distributes the load evenly across all 8 cores. But as soon as I select any of my VI tracks to record a new section, the Mac immediately shifts all the load to one processor, which usually causes peaks.

Thanks for the advice. I just experimented with using VE instead of VI and I agree that overall it does lower the processing power.

But the Buffer setting in the Server Interface window is very strange. If my Logic buffer is set to 32 for example and the Server Interface buffer is set to x2 there is practically no cpu usage at all when playing back 12 or 16 stereo matrixes and I can perform over the top without using any more cpu. But if I select x1 Buffer - my god! I immediately max out core 8 just like before.

Its amazing that changing the buffer by such a tiny amount could cause such instability. I need to do more tests.

Also - I can't work out how to open the VE application in stand alone mode. Nothing happens if I double click on it

Hi all. I think this is a topic which is specific to Vienna Instruments. I have tried loading multiple (16+) instances of other virtual instruments and I do not have the problems that I have with Vienna.

Ok, I'll try and keep this simple. If I create a Logic arrangement with around 16 or more stereo instances of Vienna Instruments, with my buffer set to 64, Logic will distribute the load evenly across the 8 cores of my MacPro during playback. But this is only the case if I do not have one of my Vienna Instruments tracks selected to play / perform / record. During playback, if I click on any of the channels which have a Vienna Instrument on to compose or record a new section, one of the 8 cores (which is always no.8 BTW) will shoot up into the red causing glitches, distortion, and error messages. The other 7 cores are at about 5 - 10%

This happens even if there is no reverb plugins open at all. My conclusion - when composing, 16 stereo Vienna Instruments is the limit for my 8-core set; when mixing and for general playback, I have not yet reached the a limit.

Raising the buffer to 256 helps, but the latency is unbearable. By the time I get to 20+ stereo Vienna Instruments I actually have to draw the events in the piano roll window, because performing new parts is simply impossible.

So, my questions are: Does this happen on all new Macpro systems? If not, how can I make Logic evenly distribute the processor power as well as it does during playback, when I compose / perform during playback?

Thanks

You see, this is what I don't understand about Macs and Logic. Why would the Mac use less cpu to play the instruments in standalone mode while recording MIDI to a MIDI track in logic than when recording MIDI directly to a software instrument track?

Thanks for your suggestion. What is MOL?

This is exactly the problem. If I select an empty audio track, playback is fine. But as soon as I want to record a new piece of MIDI on a software instrument track, I click on that track and I go straight into the red. The only thing I can do is select a buffer setting of 256 or larger, but this creates so much latency that I can't play in time to the music.

Hi all.

I have a new 8-core Mac Pro 2.8ghz/10gb/4x500gb yet I am still encountering serious CPU distribution problems not just with Vienna Instruments but all virtual instruments. The problem is that Logic can't distribute the load evenly across the 8 processors, so while 7 of them are maybe working at 10% the 8th processor peaks really easily causing overloads.

Auditioning, composing and performing is affected a lot worse than playback and I find that if I am to have any chance of making a large arrangement I have to raise the buffer to 256 or even 512. This of course causes unbearable latency when playing the instruments.

So I have been looking into buying a dedicated standalone VST/plugin player such the Muse Receptor. Does anyone know whether the Vienna Instruments plugins are compatible with such a system and if so would I benefit from using one?

Any other tips on increased performance / CPU distribution in Logic are most welcome.

Cheers,